Commercial Business Signs around Wonnapha Beach: A Linguistic Landscape Analysis
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Abstract
This article investigates the formats and functions of the language used on commercial business signs. Based on the Landry & Bourhis (1997) conceptual framework, data were gathered from 105 signs of restaurants, beverages, and accommodations along the Wonnapha Beach Road in Chon Buri Province. The findings indicate that commercial business signs on Wonnapha Beach consist of monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual signs. Bilingual signs combining English and Thai are the most commonly found, followed by monolingual signs, in which the most frequently used language is Thai, followed by English, Korean, Japanese, and Latin, respectively. There are also multilingual signs, which include: 1) Thai-Chinese-English, 2) English-Thai-Japanese, 3) English-Japanese-Thai, 4) English-Chinese-Thai, and 5) English-Korean-Thai. Moreover, it was discovered that the language on commercial business signs fulfills two distinct functions: 1) an informational function, where the signs present information in both Thai and English, and 2) a symbolic function, which can be categorized into two types: 1) a symbolic function when the store name aligns with the business, and 2) a symbolic function when the store name does not align with the business. The study’s findings reveal that Wonnapha Beach Road is a key tourist destination within a multilingual and multicultural society that values Thai, the national language, alongside other languages that represent internationalism. The results of this study can serve as a guideline for studying multilingual societies in different areas.
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ข้อความรู้ใดๆ ตลอดจนข้อคิดเห็นใดๆ เป็นของผู้เขียนแต่ละท่านโดยเฉพาะ คณะมนุษยศาสตร์ มหาวิทยาลัยนเรศวร และกองบรรณาธิการวารสารมนุษยศาสตร์ฯ ไม่จำเป็นต้องเห็นพ้องด้วย
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